Paper dolls are kind of magic. After all, it takes pure imagination
to play dress-ups with a two-dimensional drawing, yet kids and
adults have snipped and folded them for more than 250 years.
Papercraft has many traditions – Japaneseorigami; Balinese
shadow puppets; Polishwycinankiscissorcraft; andpantin, the
satirical jumping jacks of 18th-century France – but there’s an
important difference: none of them come with fabulous matching
clothes and accessories.
The first step of playing with a paper doll is to snip your
underwear-clad figure free from its paper prison. (Some have
separate pin-on heads, arms and legs to make them easier to
pose.) Then, carefully cut out their two-dimensional wardrobe and
attach the garments neatly using handy fold-over tabs. Don’t rush,
though – it takes dexterity to cut around the tiny silhouettes, and
you don’t want to accidentally give the doll an unexpected haircut
or bout of liposuction.
In their earliest days, paper dolls were fashion tools for grown
women – almost like virtual fitting rooms. In the 1780s, wealthy
ladies ‘tried on’ the latest styles by dressing miniature sketches
of themselves in outfits cut from magazines. (At this time, the
get-ups were held together with sealing wax.) And yet, ironically,
as kids caught on to the craft-based toys, they became a cautionary
tale against vanity. London-made ‘Little Fanny’ (created in 1810)
and Boston-born ‘Little Henry’ (launched in 1812) matched with
moralistic storybooks that shamed their well-to-do child heroes
for valuing clothes.
Nevertheless, children became infatuated with the 2D dolls and
their boundless creativity, and soon enough, they were popping up
everywhere from books and newspapers to magazines and ads.
Lithographed paper doll kits were the Barbies and Cabbage Patch
Kids of the early 1800s, and brands quickly latched on, including
paper dolls with their products in the hope whiny children would
convince their parents to spend some cash.
But part of the beauty of the toy was its affordability – during the
Great Depression, when newspapers only cost five cents, their
paper doll pages provided hours of cheap fun. (This era has come
to be known as the ‘Golden Age of Paper Dolls’.) The illustrated
fashions represented aspirational fantasies: chic day ensembles,
resortwear, ballgowns and wedding dresses. Nothing as vulgar as
workwear – although, during wartime, paper dolls wore patriotic
military and nurse’s uniforms. In decades heavy with women’s
rights debate, a trend emerged for smart-yet-feminine officewear.
Fluffy Ruffles, an office-worker doll whose struggles with idiot
men were first published in a 1906New York Heraldcartoon, was
so adored that she inspired a clothing line at Macy’s.
Paper doll characters with cutesy alliterative names – Lettie Lane,
Polly Pratt, Dolly Dingle, Peggy Pryde – strutted through magazines
such asLadies’ Home JournalandGood Housekeeping, mostly
drawn by the McLoughlin Brothers company, which licensed its
designs to publications of all types. Dolls were also printed in
fashion mags run by sewing pattern companies Butterick and
McCall’s. Betsy McCall – a sweet-faced, all-American five-year-old
with dark bobbed hair – made her debut in McCall’s magazine in
1951, modelling outfits that could be made using McCall’s patterns.
In fact, Betsy was so popular that she burst into three dimensions as
a series of collectible vinyl dolls.Famous folks leapt from the page to be dressed in paper duds, too- early paper doll celebrities included ballerinas Marie Taglioni
and Fanny Elssler; stage actresses Ellen Terry and Lillie Langtry,
and all manner of Hollywood stars. (Elvis Presley was particularly
popular among young girls excited to see him without his kit on.)
An 1840 box set featuring Queen Victoria kicked off an obsession
with paper royals, the full German Royal Family and House of
Windsor among them.
It wasn’t all rosy, though: paper dolls also dressed their figures
in racism. The first African-American doll, Topsey, was printed
in 1863 – the same year as the US Emancipation Proclamation.
But Topsey, a raggedy slave girl, appeared alongside Little Eva,
a well-dressed white doll with shiny hair. The servile stereotypes
kept on coming until 1950, when female illustrator Jackie Ormes
created Torchy – a black lady adventurer who fought social
injustice in a series of glamorous ‘Torchy Togs’.Indeed, the same simplicity that made paper dolls so versatile
also made them subversive. You didn’t have to dress them in the
‘right’ ways – you could even trace the figures to design your own
outfits. So, while outwardly the dolls championed mainstream
cultural values, they also offered a hidden queer message: kids,
use fashion to create new identities!In 1975, American illustrator Tom Tierney revived paper dolls as
camp playthings for a generation raised on screens. Wondering
what to give his mum for Christmas, he remembered she’d saved
her childhood paper doll collection. He decided to make dolls of
her favourite 1930s Hollywood stars: Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow
and Clark Gable. Totally chuffed, Mrs Tierney showed the figures
to a literary-agent friend, kickstarting Tom’s second career. His
dolls were out and proud as early as 1979, when his book Attitude
let readers dress New York queer icons in glamorous outfits.
From drag queens and leather-clad bikers to eminent figures like
Pope John Paul II, he created 400 paper doll tomes in total, each
meticulously researched and historically accurate.Today, paper dolls are still limited only by the imagination: they
featureRuPaul’s Drag Race contestants and Black Lives Matter
protesters, Marie Curie, Rihanna and Eleven from Stranger
Things. Whether published as high-end art books, sold online or
downloadable as free, printable PDFs, paper dolls never really
go away – they just turn a new page.fashioned from paper
GET TO KNOW THE HISTORY OF THE
PAPER DOLL, HISTORY’S FLATTEST
(BUT LOVELIEST) TOY.
Wor d s Mel Campbelllearn something new